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Fiverr – Not such a great marketplace!

Fiverr is a new marketplace where sellers offer their services starting from $5. While its great for buyers who are looking for a bargain…its not such a great place for sellers. Here are some reasons why…

1) Fiverr takes 20% of your Income
Lets say you make a sale for $5. Its quite a small amount already, yet Fiverr takes a $1 from it. You’ll get $4 and they’ll keep that dollar. As you make more money through extra offerings, the amount Fiverr takes continues to increase. Lets say you make $55, you will only get $44 and Fiverr keeps $11.

2) Fiverr usually take the buyers side
If you recently joined Fiverr, you’ll soon find out the value of reviews. Occasionally, you have buyers who take the files you work hard in producing (Eg. Articles, Graphic Design, Email templates…) and basically threaten you to refund. So for the sake of keeping 100% positive feedback, you would have to cancel the order and refund the money. If its a big order, too bad…Fiverr staff just wouldn’t bother looking into it. They always take the buyer’s side and refuse to look at the situation. Even if you tell them that the buyer is basically blackmailing you into refunding, they’ll simply say “Please sort it out with the buyer”.

3) Fiverr site design isn’t that great
Fiverr recently upgraded their entire UI to v2 but there are still some features that are missing. For example, you can only write 1200 characters max in a message. If you have a lot of explain, then you have to split your messages into parts and then post it. Fiverr doesn’t allow you to communicate outside its site. So if you want to clearly explain something to the seller, you just have to do it through its site…there is no other way. All the active orders are shown through “TO DO” list on top but if you marked an order complete and the buyer responded, Fiverr would only send you an email. They will not show it in the TO DO list. If you have 100s of orders, you will have a flood of emails from Fiverr. What comes up in TO DO list and what doesn’t is quite a challenging to figure out. Their menu and organisation of links is also quite messy. It takes time to get used to their interface and where things are.

4) Fiverr gives buyers unlimited time to leave a review
It doesn’t matter if the buyer bought a gig from you 2 years ago, they still have an opportunity to leave their feedback. I personally don’t find it right. I had buyers come to me after literally an year and asking me to fix a problem they created. I have to fix it or I risk getting a bad review from them.

5) Buyers can’t edit their feedback or remove it after a certain time
Thats right. If you leave a review and now you would like to change it, you have to contact Fiverr staff to open it up for you. If you want to remove the feedback you left, you can’t do that either. You have to contact their support staff. Lets say after 5 years, I want to change my feedback and make my seller’s life miserable…I can. I simply have to contact their staff and ask them to remove my feedback. They will remove it without a need for a reason and allow me to place a negative feedback.

One thing I do like about Fiverr is the speed at which it transfers funds. Once you click on the verification link, they will send your funds literally in a minute to your Paypal account. So well done, Fiverr!